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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27309409">The Shoelacer</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolyPlasmaBall/pseuds/HolyPlasmaBall'>HolyPlasmaBall</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fourth Age, Gen, Lorien - Freeform, POV Bilbo Baggins, Post-Canon, Unreliable Narrator, Valinor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:20:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,998</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27309409</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolyPlasmaBall/pseuds/HolyPlasmaBall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo feels guilty. Irmo rummages around in his subconscious.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Shoelacer</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When he first crossed the borders of Lórien, Bilbo felt as though the air had become tea. A heady scent of flowers and fruits weighed down his breath, and all things about were suddenly fluid by their edges.</p>
<p>He soon found a flower-hedged passage, narrow and winding, and along this road he descended into the dreaming thicket just as the first light of the day paled the horizon.</p>
<p>Aimlessly then he wandered the famed garden, yet its wonders could not pierce the gloom which shrouded his heart. Yes, the pools truly had stars in them, and the trees were silver and wrapped in silk, and everywhere he walked nightingales chattered softly to him. Everything was exactly as promised, and yet he found himself rather annoyed by the extravagant flowers and the unnecessary quirks and optic illusions. It seemed as though the ill mood which had come to haunt him would not release its grip even in this place of wellness.</p>
<p>It had begun some days before their ship had found its dock. When Bilbo had felt the vigour of the Undying Lands rekindle the strength of his body, so he felt dread seep its way into his heart, for as the fog of old age had lifted the true extent of his misdeed was finally revealed. How he had hidden the ring - how he had claimed it to begin with. How he had then left it to Frodo and hidden himself away in Elrond’s halls while innocent lives were spent in his stead.</p>
<p>Now he only wished he could go back, that by some magic the mighty Lords of the West could see his life undone. That he might try it anew and this time do things in a way which lead to less calamity.</p>
<p>By rights it should have been Bilbo who braved the road to Mordor. Frodo should have had nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>Useless hours brought the morning to noon and in its sweltering heat Bilbo began to seek for a place of shelter. All around him the silver trees displayed themselves, their roots curling into hobbit-sized nooks, shadowed from the sun and matted with moss. Voicelessly they beckoned at him, but he knew better than to hearken to such calls, for he had walked among the treacherous trees of the Old Forest, and worse yet, those of Mirkwood. Briskly he passed their eager branches, gently but firmly he refused the subtle cling of their willow-wisps, and soon a new scenery opened.</p>
<p>Before him green hills rolled ahead, and all things that grew about them were sane and proper; brambles and bluebells, foxgloves and forget-me-nots, and one mighty oak which grew upon a hill so fine it could have fit a family of Bracegirdles and then some. The trunk of the oak was plain old bark and its leaves did not chime or whisper, but rustled - as leaves should - and this Bilbo found assuring.</p>
<p>Laboriously he climbed the rising ground, and by a crooked root he finally pulled himself to sit against the body of the oak. As he sat there with his eyes closed, he almost believed he was back in Hobbiton.</p>
<p>“May I rest here?” A voice spoke, piercing Bilbo’s reverie as a ray of sunlight through the canopy.</p>
<p>At once Bilbo snapped to attention and came to see the imposing figure which had crept by him unheard. Despite his tall stature, the stranger did not seem threatening, for in his hands he held no sword, but a brimming pile of shoes. He appeared as a common man, but Bilbo was not so easily persuaded, for beyond the mundane pretences of the stranger’s eyes a fey half-light yet lingered.</p>
<p>“Please, do”, Bilbo gestured at the hilltop.</p>
<p>The stranger let the shoes fall to the ground and cross-legged he then sat amid them, patting down his waistcoat. Something akin to mild surprise twitched his brow as he pulled a pipe from his breast-pocket.</p>
<p>Not forgetting his manners even in this foreign land, Bilbo bowed his head at the strange fellow. “Bilbo Baggins, at your service.”</p>
<p>“Well met, Bilbo Baggins.” The stranger caught the bit of his pipe with his teeth, and as the bowl then miraculously lit itself, Bilbo knew him for a wizard. “The Shoelacer, at your service.”</p>
<p>Bilbo was by no means the highest authority when it came to pipe-weed, but he did know a thing or two, and the brand which now floated in grey puffs from the Shoelacer’s lips was especially well known to him. It was none other than Old Toby, the truest strain of weed were you to ask him, and the one mixture Bilbo carried within his own pipe, which he now lit in accompaniment.</p>
<p>“Old Toby”, he educated the fellow. “And based on the smell, so is yours.”</p>
<p>“So it must be”, said the Shoelacer merrily and dug around his pockets. He pulled out a handful of leather-strip-laces and began to lace the closest shoe.</p>
<p>For some minutes Bilbo smoked and the Shoelacer worked. No sound was there to disturb them besides the <em>swish</em> and <em>thwack</em> of the lace and the occasional creak of leather. To this tune of the wizard’s labour Bilbo hearkened, until his heart remembered its Took-ish inklings, and he snuck a peek at one finished pair.</p>
<p>To Bilbo’s surprising lack of surprise, he found that the lacings were neither a match nor in any way sensible. As he watched more closely, he noticed that this was the case with all shoes as no two were the same. Akin to lattices and ladders their laces were entwined, and one had a weaving in the shape of a star.</p>
<p>Now the Shoelacer double-looped eyelets and next he left one empty. He switched patterns from criss-crossed to straight-across in the middle of a shoe and when it came time to lace its pair he started from the ankle and knotted the bow at the toes.</p>
<p>All about the hillside the shoes were soon strewn, and the paths of the newer lacings no longer led to any sound patterns. Bilbo doubted if they were even enough to hold a shoe in place, but did not make his assessment known, for such was the confidence in those nimble fingers, that surely the Shoelacer knew something he did not. To this mind Bilbo decided to leave the wizard to his task and turned his thought inward.</p>
<p>An hour must have passed before the Shoelacer drew yet another pair of loose ends to a bow and pulled the pipe from his mouth.</p>
<p>“I have given it some thought”, he said. “And I can now say with confidence that there are more ways to lace a shoe than there are grains of sand in all the beaches of Aman.”</p>
<p> Bilbo beheld the mound of shoes they sat upon, the size of which was now enough to rival the golden hoard of Smaug. “Surely there are not that many shoes here?”</p>
<p>“Not yet.” The Shoelacer put the pipe back into this mouth and spoke around it, “But worry not, Master Baggins, for my skill grows by the lacing. We will reach the moon in no time.”</p>
<p>At these words Bilbo felt faint. It was an old bane of his, this fear of heights, and though he had never made a secret of it he was not particularly proud of it either. Despite his best efforts to seem unaffected, he soon white-knuckled his pipe, and his hairline broke into sweat.</p>
<p>“How ever will we make it back, I wonder?” He said as calm as he managed. “Shall we call the eagles?”</p>
<p>A hidden light flickered in the crinkling corners of the Shoelacer’s eyes. “We <em>most</em> <em>certainly</em> will<em>”</em>, he declared, and though his misplaced fervour may have unnerved a common hobbit, Bilbo was used to the strange tempers of the wizard-folk and chalked it up to such.</p>
<p>“Good. Then I shan’t worry.” Bilbo had survived worse, after all.</p>
<p>The Shoelacer hummed around his pipe and pulled the next shoelace from his pocket. As he continued his work, a thought occurred to Bilbo, that he had not yet considered.</p>
<p>“Is that the purpose of your work, then?” Bilbo asked. “An exploration of the scope of variety in shoe-lacing?”</p>
<p>“Exactly.”</p>
<p>“Then would it not be more sensible to work on a single shoe?” Bilbo asked. “Undo it and lace it anew?”</p>
<p>At this thought the Shoelacer became so aghast, the pipe fell from his slackened lips and tumbled into a shoe-burrow.</p>
<p>“Unlace and relace the same shoe?” He said. “Over and over?”</p>
<p>“We would not find ourselves in need of an eagle, had you done so from the very beginning.”</p>
<p>“Oh no, no, no. Oh dear.” The Shoelacer pulled more laces from his vest. “Have these laces and look at them. Look.”</p>
<p>Bilbo held the leather strips; brown they were and rough against his thumb, and in no way or form remarkable.</p>
<p>“I only see laces”, Bilbo said. “Nothing more.”</p>
<p>“Exactly.” The Shoelacer held out a leather boot where the lace weaved to a butterfly. “Does this not look like a butterfly to you?”</p>
<p>“It does.”</p>
<p>“And were I to pull the lace free of the shoe, would it still resemble a butterfly?”</p>
<p>Bilbo beheld the unused laces in his hand and truly he felt foolish for not seeing it sooner - at his age such wisdom was to be expected, after all. It was only as the laces were guided along their paths that they became distinct from one another. One became a butterfly, the other a star, and two together made a checkerboard. Who was Bilbo to deny them their existence?</p>
<p>“We are our stories, Bilbo Baggins”, the Shoelacer said. “To tamper with the past is to tamper with your soul. Waste not your time with what-ifs and could-have-beens. Step free of their snare and dream ahead.”</p>
<p>Bilbo met the solemn eyes of the wizard, and in their age and kindness they reminded him so much of Gandalf, he wondered if the two were kin. Something else was there too, in the secret light that was feigned away, something blessed and good and fatherly, and without a clear cause as to why, Bilbo felt absolved. </p>
<p>It was as if the floors were swept of their dust. The windows were opened, and the musty old corner rooms were aired.</p>
<p>Bilbo cleared his throat. “I think I’ve had my fill of could-have-beans.”</p>
<p>The Shoelacer dug around the pile and pulled out a matching shoe for the one he was holding. He paired them and handed them over to Bilbo. “These should be a fit.”</p>
<p>“Oh”, Bilbo said, in his sudden plight. It was clear the wizard was heavily invested in footwear, and Bilbo chose his words with care so as not to cause offense. “While I am most flattered by this noble gift, I cannot accept it in good conscience. I am of a people whose customs do not include the use of…well…shoes.”</p>
<p>“Ah!” Cried the Shoelacer, but not as one insulted. It was mirth which shone in his fey eyes as he gestured at their mountainous seat of shoes. “That explains it.”</p>
<p>Bilbo awoke to a pearly haze.</p>
<p>Upon further inspection he found himself curled up in a nest of roots and moss under a chiming willow. Crying out he scrambled away from the tree, but as nothing gave chase, he found his fright turn to laughter.</p>
<p>“Oh you”, he held his finger out at the tree. “You had me going, didn’t you? Well done.”</p>
<p>The willow gave no answer, but the silence was of the cordial sort as opposed to the brewing malice Bilbo had come to expect from enchanted woods. In like manner, he found his sullen mood turned and for once his heart was glad.</p>
<p>Perhaps it had been the urgent awakening which had freshened him, or maybe Lórien had worked its subtle magic on him as he slept. At any case, Bilbo was quite ready for another adventure.</p>
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